


Fill the Void

by underwaterocean



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Depression, F/M, Happy Ending, Post-Canon, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:14:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24711421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/underwaterocean/pseuds/underwaterocean
Summary: A longer one shot set right after the calamity where Link struggles to reconcile his place in the new Hyrule and Zelda fails to see his suffering until it's almost too late.
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 129





	1. Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning: This directly references self-harm and a suicide attempt. If those topics will cause you harm, please do not read. The second chapter is a happy one and you can skip directly there if you'd still like to read the ending without that referenced.

She had waited a century to see his face. The visage of the man she had come to love that had sustained her throughout her entrapment with the demon.  _ Demise.  _ She shuddered as the name silently passed her lips. She let it go with the wind. It was over. They had won. But she didn’t feel that her reward for her service had been just. For when she had asked her knight, the golden haired hero, if he had truly remembered, he did not answer her. He had hung his head and studied the grass without a word. She could feel his despair like a ghost across her heart just as she had when he had just woken up. She had watched helpless as he stumbled across a land now unfamiliar to him. How hard he’d worked despite it. She knew the ache in his bones and in his soul and wanted nothing more than to heal him from it. But he sat before her now silent as a century prior, still burdened with the weight of it. 

When the pair finished their trek to Kakariko, Zelda was overwrought with her own anxieties. How was she to reintegrate into her kingdom? Was she still needed? Would anyone still remember her? Did they blame her? She turned to her knight who stood dutifully by her side and he seemed to read the questions in her eyes as if they were displayed there. 

“It will be alright, Princess,” he said, voice soft as flower petals, “Impa has been waiting for you.” She let the melody of his voice soothe the storm in her soul as she climbed the steps to Impa’s home for the first time in one hundred years. 

Link watched as the two women collided and shared their heartbreak and their joy with the other. He felt like an intruder. An outsider. They spoke of Hyrule’s past, a world he was once a part of. But he was part of nothing other than the hollowness of his own mind now. He knew they saw someone else when they looked at him. They didn’t know he saw nothing when he looked at himself. He closed his eyes as he sat and leaned against the door frame as the two friends reminisced. Part of him was hopeful their musings would aid him. Perhaps even start to patch him back together. The other part knew it would not. With a silent sigh, he did what he had done since his resurrection; he fell deep into himself.

Zelda turned to question her knight over something Impa had said. Had he really infiltrated the Yiga hideout alone? But when her eyes fell on his slumped form, noticing the staggering of his breaths, her question was snuffed out and replaced with worry. 

“He has fought a long battle, my dear. Let him rest,” Impa assured her. She could feel the young woman’s unease like a fog filling the room.

“Impa, is he...does he…” Zelda faltered. She feared speaking the words would breathe them to life. 

“He doesn’t seem to remember much. He is not quite the same man you knew before. I am sorry, Princess. But he has fulfilled his destiny now and aided you in yours. We all have him to thank for that”

For once, words evaded the usually articulate Princess. She watched the sleeping form of the man she once called her only friend and wondered if she would survive the heartache of losing him a second time. 

* * *

Days passed. Zelda spent hours learning the fate of her Hyrule. She wept and she rejoiced. She remembered and she wished to forget. He stayed near her for the duration of it, though he was quiet and hardly a presence at all. His blue eyes appeared gray in the haze of Kakariko, though she was unsure if she simply imagined it. She tried to speak to him frequently; to involve him in all she did. She yearned for his voice, his touch, anything to remind her of the man she lost. But he seemed uneasy by her close proximity and her attention. As if he were afraid of disappointing her. He spent most of his days alone up near the shrine overlooking the village. The sight of his lone form was enough to break Zelda again, though she dared not approach him.

“He is not used to so much attention, Princess. You must understand the journey he’s been on. He spent months fighting alone. Be gentle” 

So she tried. She stopped pushing herself into his space and tried to content herself with simply watching. He would smile at the other villagers, but it fell when his back was turned. He hardly ate and seemed to lose himself staring off at the castle for hours at a time. He then curiously began giving small gifts to the villagers. A sword for Lasli. Ingredients for Koko. Armor for Dorian. He gave with a small nod before he left to sit with himself again. It perplexed her. At night when he thought no one was watching, she would find him kneeling in front of the Goddess statue. She wondered what he prayed for. 

* * *

Early one morning when Zelda finally became overcome with sleep, Link slipped into Impa’s home and found her nursing a cup of tea. He stood still before her and waited for her to address him. He still didn’t feel right in her company. As if he still needed to earn it. But that time had passed. He had one more quest to complete. 

“What can I help you with so early this morning, Hero?”

He looked at the floor before reaching for a small satchel at his waist, fidgeting with it before speaking.

“The Princess...she is safe here?” his voice was little above a whisper.

“The Sheikah have always been loyal to the crown. This is the safest place for her,” Impa answered. 

He nodded before walking towards her, his vision still on the floor. He placed the satchel in her lap and backed away slowly.

“Could you give this to her?” he asked.

She turned the small sack over in her hands before eyeing him curiously. 

“If you wait a few hours you can do it yourself”

He opened his mouth as if to speak before rubbing the back of his neck. The room was silent for a few moments before he replied.

“Impa, have I done all you asked of me? Is my quest complete?”

She let the small sack rest on her lap as she regarded him. He had taken off his Champion’s blue in favor of a faded grey tunic that was frayed at its edges. Gone was his jewelry and armor, save for the blue earrings that hung from his long ears. If one did not know the man before them, he could easily be mistaken for a commoner. Even his body language spoke of a lesser man. 

“Yes, Hero. The demon is sealed. The Princess is returned. I would say you have done all that was asked of you,” she remarked.

He took a moment to process her words before nodding. He turned his back and headed for the door. She watched as he unbuckled the belts from his waist and the scabbard from his back. With all the gentleness of a man handling precious cargo, he leaned the destiny bound sword against Impa’s door frame. He hesitated a moment before walking unencumbered through the door. 

The sight of the sword without its master left Impa unsettled. She called for Paya who was quick to come to her aid. Impa instructed the woman to rise the Princess. The two of them would figure out this mystery together, as they always had. 

* * *

Zelda held the bag in her hand before laying a hand across the pommel of the sword. If she closed her eyes she could almost hear the voice she knew to be inside it. Like a whisper on the wind. What message it held for her was lost in her thoughts as she opened the drawstring and looked inside the satchel.

“What has he left you?” Impa inquired.

In the bag was a key with a note attached. A single word scrawled across the parchment. The slope of the letters brought a fresh pain to her heart. It was in his hand. It simply read, “Hateno”. At the bottom of the bag were several rupees of different value. It was enough to last her months. She felt her eyes sting as she turned to Impa, objects in hand. 

“Where did he go?” her voice wavered as the key began to burn into her palm.

“Cado said he was seen leaving the village after leaving here. If you’re quick, you might catch him”

That was all Zelda needed before she burst from the door. 

* * *

Link nuzzled his face into his brown mare’s side, offering whispers of thanks before patting her gently on the flank. She eyed him curiously before sniffing his hair. He kissed the bridge of her nose and breathed into her skin.

“ _ Be free”  _

She seemed to understand as she took a tentative step backwards before galloping off into the gentle morning sun. He stood and watched her a moment before slinging his small bag over his shoulder and making his way to his destination by foot. He walked in quiet contemplation before he saw the dull metal husks of the fields before him. Blatchery Plain. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before venturing deeper into the fields and settling himself with his back propped on the back of one of the old metal beasts. 

When he let his mind wander he could go back there. The final memory. He sat and ran a calloused hand under his old tunic, feeling the sharp contrast of those scars against the softer skin that surrounded them. He could almost smell the way it had singed his skin, taste the iron of his blood in his mouth. Those scars were evidence of his failure. His inability to measure up to the Goddess’ expectations. And he’d paid his penance for that. Paid in blood, fear, new scars, and the ever present ache that was the loss of his identity. He had wondered if seeing her again would ease that for him. But it had only exacerbated it. To see that same pain reflected in her eyes when she looked at him...it was almost too much for him to bear. He couldn’t stand the thought of causing her more agony. He had told himself he was living on borrowed time. It had only taken that look of desperate longing in her eyes to confirm it for him. He had been meant to die here. 

He slowly opened the bag in his lap and pulled out one of the two items he’d brought with him. A small glass vial. He wasn’t sure if he had concocted the elixir correctly, but it should do something to dull his senses at least. He didn’t want to suffer. He’d done enough of that. He took the vial and shivered as the cold glass hit his lips. It tasted of earth. He closed his eyes once more. He imagined a mother and father waiting for him. With no reference to base his visions on, he made them as he wanted them. He thought of his mother with a dirty apron and hair that framed her face in gentle curls like his did when the air was thick with humidity. She would smile at him, the emotion of it reaching up to her matching set of sky blue eyes. She would lovingly tuck a strand of his hair behind his ear as he leaned into her touch. His father would lean in the doorway, a strong hand on his hip. He would tell Link how proud he was of his son. His son who had vanquished the Calamity at last. He felt a tear fall from his face as the first sensation of pain traveled from his arm to his brain. He could push it away the more he lost himself. So he did. He remembered his prayers to the Goddess. Prayers that he would find home again; exhausted, empty prayers that had led him here, bleeding out alone in an empty field. Another sting of pain shot across his nerves like a star across the night sky. Perhaps in the spirit realm he would find his peace.

A wicked burning sensation caused him to open his eyes. He watched, senses dulled, as the dark fluid painted lazy rivers down his palm, snaking their way to the tips of his fingers before the heavy droplets fell to the ground. He briefly wondered if they’d find their kin there. He had bled into Hyrule before. He allowed himself the comfort of thinking this was the last time as he felt the bloodloss pulling on his consciousness.

* * *

Zelda rode hard across Kakariko Bridge, Dorian on her trail. She stopped briefly at the stable, trying hard to subdue her panic. After asking every Hylian in sight, a young boy finally approached, mentioning he saw someone walking towards the old guardians not so long ago. He had remembered because he thought it strange. Zelda’s heart seized at the very thought of it. The last she’d seen of those fields had been a century prior. She knew better than to let the memory conquer her. She was stronger than that now. And Link needed her again. So they rode forward. 

It was Dorian who had pointed to the figure slouched against a fallen guardian, but it was Zelda who approached it, motioning for Dorian to stay back. A slight breeze lifted a tuft of golden hair from the figure’s face and Zelda could see it was him. She let out a breath and ran towards him. 

He sat with his knees bent, resting his arms between them, his head arched backward on the metal structure for support. His eyes were closed, but a pained expression pulled his brows together. He made no notion to suggest he heard her approach. She called his name but he did not answer. It was the knife on the ground near his hip that answered for her, a dull sheen of blood glinting in the now noon time sun. It gave her a pause before she truly looked at him and saw the wounds on both his wrists, the pallor of his skin, the smell of iron making its way to the pit of her stomach threatening to make her sick. She screamed his name and his eyes fluttered open. 

_ Is this a dream? _

“Link! What have you done!” Zelda wailed as she cradled his paling face in her hands. 

“ _ Going home,”  _ he managed before the darkness at the edge of his vision took over and he went limp in her arms. 

* * *

He woke in a darkened room, his head groggy and his body feeling so cumbersome he could hardly move. He tried to lift his arm but it was heavily bandaged. The taste of metal was rampant in his arid mouth as he tried to wet the dryness that coated his lips. He slowly turned his head, feeling a wave of nausea roll over him with the motion. That’s when he noticed the weight on his other hand. It was delicate and warm and shifted as he moved beneath it. As his vision cleared he could make out the shape of Zelda beside him on the floor, her head resting on the side of whatever he was laying on, her hand firmly on his. He felt shame rake its icy fingers across his skin as he moved to pull his hand from her grasp, but the movement caused her to stir as she gripped him tighter and lifted her head. Green met blue and she seemed to melt at the sight of him. His face heated and he turned his gaze from her, swallowing the lump that had lodged in his throat. 

“You’re awake”

Her voice tumbled into the deepest parts of him; reverberating around in the emptiness it found there. He lifted his gaze to try to understand where he was. She watched as his blown irises scanned the room until it seemed to dawn on him. He was in Impa’s home. Night had fallen. The only sounds were his heavy breathing and the wind chimes that gently tapped together outside. 

“I...we used the slate,” Zelda began cautiously, “I took a gamble and discovered it can transport two. Dorian helped to carry you here. Paya gave you an elixir to stop the bleeding and then I helped to patch you up. Link, you nearly…” she trailed off as she watched him. Every new name in her telling of what happened was like another bruise to his heart. He hadn’t meant to cause so much trouble. He had only wanted to quietly disappear. 

“ _ Why,”  _ he rasped before he felt himself choke on the word, leading into a small fit of coughing that had Zelda fussing over him in ways that he didn’t feel worthy of. She placed a water skin to his cracked lips and he drank, eager for the cool liquid to wash away the metal that lined his throat. When he regained his breath, she sat back on her knees and rested her elbows on his cot, folding her hands beneath her chin so she could stare at him with those eyes that burned into his skin.

“I had hoped I would be able to ask you the same thing”

His chin quivered as he tried to form the words to explain to her why he had watered the fields of Blatchery once again with his blood. He didn’t know how to tell her that he was no longer a man. Just the ghost of a hero given life to undo what he had broken. He didn’t know how to tell her that he could see in her eyes that when she looked at him, she saw someone he could never be. That he had decided it would be easier for her to allow her to finally grieve for what she’d lost and to allow him the rest he’d been denied for a century. But the way she looked at him now had him questioning everything. 

“It wasn’t fair to you,” he croaked.

A look of confusion pulled at Zelda’s features as she pondered his words. 

“What do you mean?”  
  
He took a deep breath and continued, “I don’t know what you’re looking for when you look at me. I don’t…”

His face twisted in discomfort, not just at his physical condition but also at the thought of finally allowing those demons to escape his mind. Zelda eyed him curiously and remained quiet, encouraging him to continue. 

“I don’t know how to be what everyone thinks I am. Now that I’ve...done all that was asked I just...I was empty. I had no more purpose. I just...I thought...that you could finally find peace if I weren’t always here to...remind you of what I was not,” his words came very slowly, his voice still hoarse, but Zelda could nearly taste the pain that lined them. 

She took a moment to compose herself before filling her lungs with life, feeling the exhale on the back of her teeth as she took his hand in her own as she held it to her chest. He trembled at her touch but did not pull away. 

“What I see when I look at you is not the man I knew a century ago. I simply see you, as you are. Link, you never asked for this to happen to you. Not then and certainly not now. I knew you didn’t remember. But I also knew that I had changed in inexplicable ways myself. One doesn’t spend a century in stasis with Demise and come out the same naive girl they once were. The people we were before...they are gone. Another casualty of the Calamity. I knew that,” she began, watching the way his eyes followed her every word.

“My mistake was that I thought you knew that too. When we came to Kakariko I thought I could finally give you what you had been denied your entire life. A choice. You’re free now, Link. To find your own purpose. To be whoever you choose, not whoever you think you should be. I just never imagined that this is what you would choose…”

“I’m sorry,” he wept, finally letting the anguish that had pooled in his eyes pour over his cheeks, “I’m sorry I keep hurting you” 

“How are you hurting me?” she pleaded, using her other hand to wipe the tears from his face. 

“When you asked if I remembered you I couldn’t even find the strength to answer. I knew it hurt you, but I just...couldn’t. The more time we spent here and the more I saw you searching for something I knew I didn’t have...I just could no longer stand it. I kept pulling away. And now…” he gestured feebly with a wavering arm at his body before he let it fall, turning his face away from her so she would no longer have to look at his shame, “I’m just sorry you have to see your hero like this. You deserve so much more”

She took her hand and placed it lightly on his cheek, encouraging him to face her once more. Her eyes were soft, her cheeks wet with her own tears. 

“You keep speaking of me. My well-being. What I deserve. But I am here...unharmed and well, thanks to your valiant efforts. What is it that  _ you  _ deserve, Link? What do  _ you  _ want for yourself?” 

He looked at her puzzled for a long moment while she stroked his hair and wiped the tears from his cheeks. He tried to formulate words to reply, but they died before they could pass his lips. 

“I know you don’t remember your past and I know that hurts you. But Link…” he lifted his eyes to meet hers, “Please don’t leave. This Hyrule is unfamiliar enough without you in it, regardless of how whole you feel you are. You deserve to live, free and unburdened. Please let me give you that. Whether you chose to stay by my side or not is up to you. I refuse to make you follow an order any longer. I think we’ve had enough of that. All I ask is that you try. Try to find some happiness with this life you’ve been given. You are more than deserving of it. And if you’d let me...I would very much like to help you see that for yourself”

They are both crying in earnest now and Zelda finds herself nearly laying on the small cot with him as he sobs into her collarbone. When he finally pulls back, his eyes are swollen and he seems a little dazed, barely able to keep his head upright and his lids from closing. 

“It’s the elixir,” she explained, “Paya said you may sleep several days. That’s why I was surprised to see you awake. I will...I will let you rest”

She made a move to leave him, but he used what little strength he had to catch her sleeve before she managed to completely leave his space. 

“Link?”

“Would you stay with me?” he whispered as his fatigue pulled him closer to oblivion. 

“Always, my Hero”

She wiggled her way onto the small frame of the cot and they shifted awkwardly together for a few moments before she found herself cradled in his arms, her face resting against his chest. He seemed to deflate once her warmth found him and he quickly succumbed to the elixir’s effect once again. Zelda felt the same pull of fatigue, but refused to give in. She kept herself awake, if only just to listen to the beating of his heart in her ear. 


	2. Home

They stood together at the peak of Polymus mountain, the wind playing in their golden hair. Zelda leaned into Link as he put an arm around her shoulder. 

“I shouldn’t find it hard to believe you can single-handedly do away with a lynel as if it were a pest to be swatted away. But it never ceases to amaze me. You know it used to take a dozen or more soldiers just to wound one back in the day,” she reminisced into the steady up and down of his chest, feeling the way the adrenaline pumped through him like lighting. 

He was quiet for a moment, which gave way to regret pooling in Zelda’s throat as she realized she had done it again. Stirred up the past. Though he had done much healing since his stint on the Blatchery Plain a year ago, he still carried that burden of loss in his heart. She had promised not to make it worse, but she was also quite talkative and found herself blabbering more than she meant to on more than one occasion. She had the apology on her lips before she looked up at him, noticing the smirk that had found its way to his face.

“A dozen knights you say, for a single lynel?” he clicked his tongue and put a hand on his hip, “seems like poor training to me” 

She scoffed at him as she pulled away to take in the utterly sassy body language he was displaying with his hip cocked in that manner and the quirk in his eyebrow. 

“It was  _ you  _ who trained them!” she argued, watching as his smile got broader the more he realized he had ruffled her. He had regained a good deal of memory over that past with her help. He knew he had been Captain of her guard, much like his father before him. He knew he had been loved and cared for by his family and he was well regarded throughout the castle. He had also discovered that he had been utterly, hopelessly in love with her and been forced to repress it due to his status, a fact that they had both worked diligently to reverse in this new life they'd been given. She should have known him to make light of it, though that was an entirely new side of him he had discovered. A lighthearted and rambunctious nature that had Zelda falling even more smitten with him than she already had. 

“Well you should have dismissed me for that,” he teased, “At most it should only take two good men to down a lynel. They aren’t the brightest beasts, just mean and relentless. Like me” 

“Oh, hardly!” she said as she smacked him on the arm, only to be met with a laugh that bubbled up from deep within his chest, “I would have never dismissed you. I wanted to keep you around”

“Oh yeah? And why is that?” his teasing tone only amplified as he grinned at the way the memory flushed across her cheeks. 

“Because...you were the Captain. And you were quite good at it. Would have been a pain to find someone else,” she said as she turned from him, crossing her arms in a playful display of haughtiness. 

“That’s all? Just a question of staffing?” he egged her on, watching as she grinned at him out of the corner of her mouth. 

“Of course” 

“It’s not that you just enjoyed looking at me?” 

She turned on her heels then, her cheeks crimson from more than just the exertion of their hike, before she shoved him. He made a show of stumbling under her power, though she knew she could never move him. 

“You are an absolute...just all around... _ perfect  _ example of a…” she stuttered with her finger in his face, his smile threatening to split his own in two the more it stretched at her scolding. 

“Go on,” he grinned. 

Suddenly her demeanor changed and it was her that held a mischievous smirk. She stepped back and eyed him from head to toe, relishing as a dusting of his own came over his cheeks at her sudden shift. 

“Oh, if you insist,” she started, trailing the finger that had been pointing at him lightly across his chest. 

“I liked the way you kept your hair long and tied it at the nape of your neck,” she said as she leaned in closer. She could feel the heat rising from his chest and she continued to run her finger across it. She knew he could not take what he dished out and she planned to take great advantage of it. 

“I liked the way it curled into little ringlets on summer days,” she kept on, getting closer and closer to his neck. He merely hummed in response, now unable to form a single word. 

“And I wondered…” she ran a hand along the back of his neck, releasing his mane from where he had currently tied it in the same fashion, “what it would look like when you let it down, like this” 

As she leaned across his face, he finally found himself again and swooped her in for a deep kiss. She laughed into his mouth and he crushed against her. They stayed that way for a while, drinking each other in, until Link finally came up for air. 

“Zelda,” he breathed, “would you like to go for a swim?”

Her face skewed as she tried to puzzle at where that comment had come from before she realized what he was doing. 

“Hold on, Princess,” he said with a wicked grin as he picked her up by the hips and wrapped her legs around his waist. 

“Don’t you dare!” she squealed as he took off in a dead run for the edge of the cliff. 

She held onto him with a death grip as he leapt into the air. She felt all the air leave her lungs when he finally opened the paraglider and gravity found them with a resounding drop of both their stomachs. They drifted calmly down the edge of the mountain before he expertly folded the paraglider away before allowing them to fall into the lake together. 

When Zelda came up for air she used all her might to rush him with a wave of water that left him sputtering and coughing before he ended up laughing. 

“You ass! You could have killed me!” she swore, sending another wave his way. 

“But I didn’t, did I?” he laughed as he splashed her back. 

“I’ll get you for that!” she yelled as she swam to him and latched onto his chest, causing them both to fumble underwater. 

When he came up for breath she stole it straight from his mouth as she expertly ran her cold hands down the planes of his chest through his shirt. He felt hot and cold all at the same time as she slid against him in the water. Zelda knew exactly what she needed to do to get him flustered and did her best work, leaving him sputtering and flailing in the water, barely staying above the surface. When she was pleased with her work, she kicked off of him and began a steady pace towards the shore. 

“Hey!” he groaned as she left him behind in the bubble of her wake, “get back here, that’s not fair!” 

“You’ll have to catch me, hero!” 

They found themselves lost to laughter as they raced to shore. The sound of it picked up in the slight breeze, lofting high into the sky over Zora’s Domain, mingling with clouds before falling back to earth to tickle against the fields of flowers, lifting back up in the updraft of a bee before fading away in the fields of endless green. For they were the Princess and the Hero of this land and their breath was the very breath of Hyrule.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I went to work on my other two works and this happened. I don't know where it came from. But here it is. I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
